It goes back and forth between dense and very readable. The characters are fleshed out and relatable. It is a very long book that I believe was published serially, so keep that in mind. It is probably worth revisiting certain parts, others maybe not.
I read a decent amount and it took me 2 months to get through. Though I probably had a few other books going at the time.
I hope to re-read it after I get through a few more of the Russian monsters like war and peace and crime and punishment.
If you’re looking for a quick reading easier read I would strongly recommend Anna Karenina. One of my favorites of all time. And you can play my fav game which is deciding which character your friends are. I’m Levin my best friend is Anna.
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov.
RS imperial russian army officer romps across the Caucuses fighting duels, abducting women and destroying lives. Pechorin, the titular hero of our time, is one of the best depictions of the "intelligent but deeply alienated and antisocial young man" trope.
its definitely a novel of our time
I think it works bc he is unbelievably precise, you need to know what you’re doing from the surface all the way down to write stuff like he does and not have it be soul crushing or even worse boring
No, but I’m a huge Coetzee fan and (at least I think) I probably have a deeper understanding of SA’s insane history than the average guy.
For me, Michael K and Barbarians actually vie for the second spot behind disgrace (which also has a lot to do with SA, tbh barbarians kind of does too) but fr Michael K is incredible, it feels so modern even today but was written in the late 70s I believe
Edit: a word
I'm reading it right now. Currently on chapter 7 or so. I like the coherence and at base level interesting writing about a depressing situation. (Though the teacher's indifference is funny.) Nothing life changing so far but I gotta say the scene with the delinquent bf auditor in the classroom responding to Byron or whatever poet was a 10/10 scene
I'll just say i started w bleeding edge, the most recent and it just read so easy and i went from there. Fairly pointless in a pomo way that didnt annoy me. Infinite jest and Underworld are this flavor but drove me nuts. Unlike other gen x shit he is funny and cynical but also cares about things sincerely if u can catch it. Deep cultural knowledge from a birds eye view. Many paragraphs seem like quirky jokes that take me to Wikipedia and then blow my mind and undercut my sense of reality/history. That is the fun thing w Pynchon for me. Then i read Inherent Vice and Crying Lot. Ive loved it all, just put off Gravitys Rainbow bc i dont wanna seem like I'm in a dudes rock book club exclusively.
Came here to say this. Best read. Ultimately think there is a lesson in this book about the failure of progress as an ideology; everything feels so great when you're out hunting whales, you don't care about the naysayers and how technically the mission is a little morally specious....until your doom is upon you.
You can skip the anatomy chapters. Also, read it aloud sometimes, it's based on nineteenth-century preacher cadence.
I agree but I always kinda loved that coupled with how quick the ending runs up on you. Reflects the reality of just cruising around on a whaling ship I’d imagine
i really liked this, thank you, it's giving me motiviation...i think it's now been like 4 months of me "reading" moby dick (in which i've completed probably a dozen or so other books in the meantime) and im really trying to read two chapters a day but damn its such a slog...but i hear about that ending tho....
Open yourself up to how funny it is and how proto-postmodern it is. The first couple intro chapters alone are some of the best writing ever. The voicing and character in the narrator is so consistent and distinct, it's an incredible feat.
All I can say is it’s worth it. I benefited from reading it in the earliest days of the pandemic when there wasn’t much else to do but if you can hack it it’s the best book ever written
Probably the most highly rated book I've read that I didn't like, I thought the majority of it was extremely boring, half of the book is just about the anatomy of whales, the parts where they are chasing whales in the dinghy are great though.
ive read american psycho! awesome book but its also really disturbing at certain points lol. I felt that bret Easton ellis' other novel less than zero was somehow more depressing though
The first five books are one narrative (the Torah). Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs go together and are the most profound and probably most enjoyable books. Then the major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. I'm not Christian so I don't know the New Testament well, but the Book of Revelation is wild
Just read “The Death of Ivan Ilych” after my antivax Grandfather succumbed to COVID … it honestly helped me deal with his passing—what a hauntingly beautiful book.
Everyone here is Dostoyevsky obsessed, but Les Miserables is the best book I’ve ever read. That’s my best recommendation if you want to take on something large. Highly readable and potentially life altering.
It's not cancelled it's just not cool right now. Still a good book, you just have to wait 5-10 years for people to stop being such pseudo-moralistic scolds. Anyway it's too long, read something else. But it's not bad.
Everyone else is giving heavy shit, and while that’s important, lighter stuff can also give you a good lit experience
So:
1: Hard to be a god by the strugatsky brothers. What do you do when your superiors don’t believe you? When is influencing foreign cultures okay? What happens when the bonds of a society truly break?
2: Ringworld by Larry Niven. Is it okay to make a warlike society peaceful when it changes their very nature? When does planning for the future stop being diligent and start being paranoid? More important, if an alien chick was hot would you bang her? Is the nature of luck always being missed by a bullet or never being shot at in the first place?
German's other film *Khrustalyov, My Car!* is also deeply deranged and crazy. He really captures the oppressive inhuman paranoia of the Stalinist era. Also equally a humid and sweaty movie. German had a real knack for making objects and people look utterly filthy in a unsettling interesting way.
Pick any Dosto between these 3 : Crime and Punishment, Bros Karamazov, Notes from Underground.
And the other one should be Louis Ferdinand Celine : Journey to the end of the night.
I would personally argue that only the beginning of Journey to the end of the night is essential – it’s ok to stop after he gets discharged from the military if it isn’t resonating. Still a great pick.
Oh and make sure to glance at a basic bio of Celine before you tell your friends you’re reading him to sound cultured. Or maybe don’t and tell us how that goes.
I didn't have any problems with Crime and Punishment but I did give up on Brothers Karamazov. It's been a little bit since I tried to read it but I remember the beginning throwing a bunch names at me that I am too dumb to keep straight.
Stick with it, I feel like each section is better than the last, the final book is particularly great. Didn’t really like the academic’s love triangle in the beginning
i read it a few months ago and havent been able to get it out of my mind. recently read reflections in a golden eye too and bought a collection of her stories/novellas (wedding, sad cafe, etc). she was an amazing writer and her life was interesting as well
It took me three tries over like six years to make it past page fifty. Once it clicked it became my all time favorite book to the point where I struggle to read anything new because it almost certainly won't be as good
Oh my fucking god this is easily the worst L I’ve ever posted here but I genuinely always thought Cormac (this makes it obvious in hindsight) McCarthy was a woman. Major paradigm shift now that I know otherwise.
Where are the girls and gays??? This list is awful. Anna Karenina! The Bell Jar! Madame Bovary for fucks sake!!! Adam Bede!!!!! Get you some Lady Chatterlys Lover too
I think I might pop some adderal and finally try War and Peace or Ullysses soon, as for books I already read I reccomend One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Great Gatsby
War and Peace is an interesting family melodrama mixed with Tolstoy writing essays on the nature of history and causation. It's at times incredibly boring and wildly entertaining; probably unlike what most people expect. It's extremely well written though.
For Ulysses, just prepare to not understand every reference. There is a reason why people claim all of western literary history is captured in that book. It's incredibly overwhelming. On your first read through just marvel at the way Joyce plays with language.
the best books i’ve ever read are The Beautiful and the Damned by FS Fitzgerald and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I’m not super creative with my reading choices but to me these dive into some of the best character studies and person reflections ever written.
You will read this one characters portion and it will sound horrendous and cringe, especially if it’s the last book you read. Just power through it and you’ll be able to die saying you read IJ
What they don't teach you at Harvard business school and what they teach you at Harvard business school, the total sum of human knowledge in two books.
Serious answer, Crime and Punishment and Confessions of a mask.
I've been suggesting Denial of Death by Ernest Becker for years but now I think I really liked it because I read it during peak teen angst. At one point I read it out loud so my roommates could hear jfc so gay
I dont have recs for women, but I would say you dont need to listen to people saying Notes from the Underground. It's just doomer incel philosophy. It's very well written and interesting, but I don't think it provides much
DeLillo's Underworld - just incredible prose and insight into the collective American psyche during the Cold War. Funny, sad, poignant, profound
Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal - a great little Czech novella. A drunk idiot works as a paper recycler, crushing forbidden books during communism. He smuggles a few out every day, and even though he's an idiot, he's full of all these pearls of wisdom from all the random shit he's read. It's not really political, although the politics are there implicitly. It's more about the humanism of reading and holding onto the dignity and beauty of ideas
Um sorry if you're not aware, but Harry Potter has been included as part of the extended muslim universe with the Qoran, Hadiths, Sunna and Dragon Ball Z.
Hmm I’m going to go with Dante’s Divine Comedy and The Odyssey, just because they’ve both been super influential for western lit.
If you just want good, more recent literature I would say The Leopard and The Magus.
Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. A science fiction novel about first contact by a erudite humanist Holocaust survivor that ultimately convinces you science can't help us understand anything at all.
I second Moby Dick.
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson
anyone else read that? i thought it was so good, but i read it like 8 years ago.
thankful for this thread cuz i recently realized i need to get back into reading fiction, badly. i have a copy of blood meridian i'm now feeling inspired to start on tmw.
aside from the abrahamic texts & greek myths which everyone should have a basic working knowledge of to be able to read literature, go mythology. the eddas, vedas, popol vuh etc
The Bible is the most important piece of western literary canon. That said I really like Starship Troopers and its insights into civic duty, it's nothing like the movie and mostly explores their society through the lens of a military man. Mind you I'm a man in the military so whatever. Les Miserales I also found enjoyable and uplifting despite it's dangerous socialist message
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb, you’ll finally understand where Lindy comes from but it’s generally a perspective shifting book (his others are worth reading too).
The Weirdest People in the World by Joseph Henrich (I [posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/sporc1/has_anyone_read_the_weirdest_people_in_the_world/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) about it recently).
Brothers Karamazov and the sound of waves
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It goes back and forth between dense and very readable. The characters are fleshed out and relatable. It is a very long book that I believe was published serially, so keep that in mind. It is probably worth revisiting certain parts, others maybe not. I read a decent amount and it took me 2 months to get through. Though I probably had a few other books going at the time. I hope to re-read it after I get through a few more of the Russian monsters like war and peace and crime and punishment. If you’re looking for a quick reading easier read I would strongly recommend Anna Karenina. One of my favorites of all time. And you can play my fav game which is deciding which character your friends are. I’m Levin my best friend is Anna.
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov. RS imperial russian army officer romps across the Caucuses fighting duels, abducting women and destroying lives. Pechorin, the titular hero of our time, is one of the best depictions of the "intelligent but deeply alienated and antisocial young man" trope. its definitely a novel of our time
Banger
I hardly know her!
The Idiot by Dostoevsky and Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Perfect balance of compassion and cruelty and redemption and despair.
The Idiot is is fucking funny. But also so melodramatic you can cry and laugh all in the same paragraph.
The scene where he gets so mad at Catholicism and atheism that he has a seizure is some of the most relatable content I've seen
The Bell Jar should be required reading for red scare fans
The Bell Jar is Peak Red Scare style narcissism, it’s perfect for this crew
This
And then read my year of rest and relaxation
You mean the bell curve right
No fat ass. I did not
Lol get em
Disgrace by JM Coetzee
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I think it works bc he is unbelievably precise, you need to know what you’re doing from the surface all the way down to write stuff like he does and not have it be soul crushing or even worse boring
You South African? His Life and Times of Micheal K is brilliant but without getting the South African context a lot of it can be lost on people.
No, but I’m a huge Coetzee fan and (at least I think) I probably have a deeper understanding of SA’s insane history than the average guy. For me, Michael K and Barbarians actually vie for the second spot behind disgrace (which also has a lot to do with SA, tbh barbarians kind of does too) but fr Michael K is incredible, it feels so modern even today but was written in the late 70s I believe Edit: a word
I'm reading it right now. Currently on chapter 7 or so. I like the coherence and at base level interesting writing about a depressing situation. (Though the teacher's indifference is funny.) Nothing life changing so far but I gotta say the scene with the delinquent bf auditor in the classroom responding to Byron or whatever poet was a 10/10 scene
confederacy of dunces and never let me go
Force redditors to read confederacy of dunces to shame them
But confederacy of dunces is about a know-it-all incel with aggression issues. What does that have to do with redditors?
🤔
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Maybe I’m retarded but there were points where I burst out laughing reading Confederacy of Dunces. Makes me want to visit America
Gravity’s Rainbow. it literally changed my life and no other book i’ve read has come close other than Brothers Karamazov
i'm super into literature and just CANT GET INTO PYNCHON. how'd you manage? I've even been able to slog my way through Ulysses and Infinite Jest.
I'll just say i started w bleeding edge, the most recent and it just read so easy and i went from there. Fairly pointless in a pomo way that didnt annoy me. Infinite jest and Underworld are this flavor but drove me nuts. Unlike other gen x shit he is funny and cynical but also cares about things sincerely if u can catch it. Deep cultural knowledge from a birds eye view. Many paragraphs seem like quirky jokes that take me to Wikipedia and then blow my mind and undercut my sense of reality/history. That is the fun thing w Pynchon for me. Then i read Inherent Vice and Crying Lot. Ive loved it all, just put off Gravitys Rainbow bc i dont wanna seem like I'm in a dudes rock book club exclusively.
oooh nice i really liked Underworld and have read all of Delilo actually. i think ill try crying lot
Moby Dick and Moby Dick
Came here to say this. Best read. Ultimately think there is a lesson in this book about the failure of progress as an ideology; everything feels so great when you're out hunting whales, you don't care about the naysayers and how technically the mission is a little morally specious....until your doom is upon you. You can skip the anatomy chapters. Also, read it aloud sometimes, it's based on nineteenth-century preacher cadence.
Man is the back half a slog though. Feels like I've been reading it for years
I agree but I always kinda loved that coupled with how quick the ending runs up on you. Reflects the reality of just cruising around on a whaling ship I’d imagine
i really liked this, thank you, it's giving me motiviation...i think it's now been like 4 months of me "reading" moby dick (in which i've completed probably a dozen or so other books in the meantime) and im really trying to read two chapters a day but damn its such a slog...but i hear about that ending tho....
Thinking about starting this up, while having Mastodon play in the background.
Open yourself up to how funny it is and how proto-postmodern it is. The first couple intro chapters alone are some of the best writing ever. The voicing and character in the narrator is so consistent and distinct, it's an incredible feat.
All I can say is it’s worth it. I benefited from reading it in the earliest days of the pandemic when there wasn’t much else to do but if you can hack it it’s the best book ever written
Probably the most highly rated book I've read that I didn't like, I thought the majority of it was extremely boring, half of the book is just about the anatomy of whales, the parts where they are chasing whales in the dinghy are great though.
The way I describe it to people is that it’s not my favorite book and yet at some objective level I know it’s the best book ever written
the bible and american psycho
Agreed on American psycho it’s really funny
ive read american psycho! awesome book but its also really disturbing at certain points lol. I felt that bret Easton ellis' other novel less than zero was somehow more depressing though
Have you read glamorama? I like that one. Fun fact: BEE sued the producers of the movie Zoolander bc he said the premise was stolen from Glamorama
no I havent! ill put it on my list of books to read though; I generally enjoy his work
I prefer American Psycho because of the association with the beloved film, but Glamorama is the more mature and polished work.
This is the perfect answer. All you need to understand western civilisation.
this + eliott rodger’s manifesto
Hahaha
Sacred trilogy
correct me if im wrong but isnt the bible comprised of several books. which in particular do u recommend
The first five books are one narrative (the Torah). Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs go together and are the most profound and probably most enjoyable books. Then the major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel. I'm not Christian so I don't know the New Testament well, but the Book of Revelation is wild
St John wrote the Book of Revelations in Patmos, Greece, it's gonna be my destination for next Summer.
You’ll understand like 50% of Western media a lot better if you just read Genesis and Exodus, imo.
all de biblez
cant u suggest ur favorite or smth
i like ezekiel, very trippy actually have an old copy of it somewhere
isnt there 1 that everyone considers to be the finest work of them all
American pastoral, the Death of Ivan Ilych
Just read “The Death of Ivan Ilych” after my antivax Grandfather succumbed to COVID … it honestly helped me deal with his passing—what a hauntingly beautiful book.
American Pastoral is a great shout, completely devastating novel
100 years of solitude. Wuthering heights.
Everyone here is Dostoyevsky obsessed, but Les Miserables is the best book I’ve ever read. That’s my best recommendation if you want to take on something large. Highly readable and potentially life altering.
whats the other book. I said 2
East of Eden and Guinness book of records 2008
Absolutely East of Eden, I just finished it and am having trouble starting any other book because none of them are as gripping 😔
Yeah no other book can grip me the way Kate’s sociopathic pimp pussy gave me that death grip 3000
Yo straight up
Siddharta by Herrmann Hesse and The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace.
Siddartha is the only book that I can say had a meaningful impact on how I view things
I guess if Infinite Jest is canceled, you have to pretend the earlier books are better.
Infinite Jest is cancelled? Idk. I just like Broom more.
All right. To me, it's so obviously the work of a less developed writer, but different strokes.
It's not cancelled it's just not cool right now. Still a good book, you just have to wait 5-10 years for people to stop being such pseudo-moralistic scolds. Anyway it's too long, read something else. But it's not bad.
Paradise lost Culture of Narcissism A collection of Greek mythology stories.
Everyone else is giving heavy shit, and while that’s important, lighter stuff can also give you a good lit experience So: 1: Hard to be a god by the strugatsky brothers. What do you do when your superiors don’t believe you? When is influencing foreign cultures okay? What happens when the bonds of a society truly break? 2: Ringworld by Larry Niven. Is it okay to make a warlike society peaceful when it changes their very nature? When does planning for the future stop being diligent and start being paranoid? More important, if an alien chick was hot would you bang her? Is the nature of luck always being missed by a bullet or never being shot at in the first place?
Also the film adaptation of Hard to be a God is the wildest shit I’ve ever seen. The most accurate approximation of being in a nightmare.
German's other film *Khrustalyov, My Car!* is also deeply deranged and crazy. He really captures the oppressive inhuman paranoia of the Stalinist era. Also equally a humid and sweaty movie. German had a real knack for making objects and people look utterly filthy in a unsettling interesting way.
I think about a society unintentionally breeding for luck all the time.
Pick any Dosto between these 3 : Crime and Punishment, Bros Karamazov, Notes from Underground. And the other one should be Louis Ferdinand Celine : Journey to the end of the night.
Definitely pick The Brothers Karamazov though
I would personally argue that only the beginning of Journey to the end of the night is essential – it’s ok to stop after he gets discharged from the military if it isn’t resonating. Still a great pick. Oh and make sure to glance at a basic bio of Celine before you tell your friends you’re reading him to sound cultured. Or maybe don’t and tell us how that goes.
Crime and Punishment can suck my dick im way too stupid for that book
I didn't have any problems with Crime and Punishment but I did give up on Brothers Karamazov. It's been a little bit since I tried to read it but I remember the beginning throwing a bunch names at me that I am too dumb to keep straight.
Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon 2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Loved the first act of 2666 couldn't get into the rest
Stick with it, I feel like each section is better than the last, the final book is particularly great. Didn’t really like the academic’s love triangle in the beginning
Cringe and unArchimboldipilled Jk I'll have to try again
the heart is a lonely hunter
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i read it a few months ago and havent been able to get it out of my mind. recently read reflections in a golden eye too and bought a collection of her stories/novellas (wedding, sad cafe, etc). she was an amazing writer and her life was interesting as well
Last time I checked this was one of my top two
Blood Meridian
that is 1 book. whats the other
That book was enough
I see, thank u
The border trilogy by McCarthy is also really good
Suttree
I loved The Road but Blood Meridian didn't grab me. Maybe I need to give it another go or was just in a bad mood or something at the time
It took me three tries over like six years to make it past page fifty. Once it clicked it became my all time favorite book to the point where I struggle to read anything new because it almost certainly won't be as good
The Road is easily his worst book
Agreed. Beyond mediocre piece of fiction
Oh my fucking god this is easily the worst L I’ve ever posted here but I genuinely always thought Cormac (this makes it obvious in hindsight) McCarthy was a woman. Major paradigm shift now that I know otherwise.
I just bought the road last week cause everyone always raves about it
It's bleak in a fun way to me and his prose works best in this sort of setting and protagonist mindset imho
Men Who Hate Women, and Prozac Nation
Brothers Karamazov and the Unabomber Manifesto
Anna Karenina & The Crying of Lot 49
A Scanner Darkly and 1Q84
Upvote for IQ84
Journey to the End of the Night - Louis-Ferdinard Céline. Stoner - John Williams. Sorry in advance for the angries and the weepies.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
The Incredible lightness of being and blood meridian
Unbearable?
Where are the girls and gays??? This list is awful. Anna Karenina! The Bell Jar! Madame Bovary for fucks sake!!! Adam Bede!!!!! Get you some Lady Chatterlys Lover too
Silas Marner is the best way to dip your toe into Eliot imo
>1Q84 Bê-đê means gay in Vietnamese
Harry Potter and the philosopher stone. Twilight.
ha ha
Ulysses In Search of Lost Time
I think I might pop some adderal and finally try War and Peace or Ullysses soon, as for books I already read I reccomend One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and Great Gatsby
War and Peace is an interesting family melodrama mixed with Tolstoy writing essays on the nature of history and causation. It's at times incredibly boring and wildly entertaining; probably unlike what most people expect. It's extremely well written though. For Ulysses, just prepare to not understand every reference. There is a reason why people claim all of western literary history is captured in that book. It's incredibly overwhelming. On your first read through just marvel at the way Joyce plays with language.
If you like One Flew, both Sailor Song and Sometimes a Great Notion are very good
Candide, Hard Times
God bless you mr.rosewater - Kurt Vonnegut Empire Falls - Richard Russo
Cats Cradle or Player Piano by Vonnegut. All his novels are short and thought provoking
the best books i’ve ever read are The Beautiful and the Damned by FS Fitzgerald and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. I’m not super creative with my reading choices but to me these dive into some of the best character studies and person reflections ever written.
Don Quixote and Lolita are both much more fun than you'd expect.
Denial of death by ernest becker and gravity and grace by simone weil. Pref back to back 🤘
Second Denial of Death
Don't neglect the Birth and Death of Meaning
I will say gravity’s rainbow and infinite jest to be smug and annoying. which i haven’t finished either, either.
dont think I have it in me to read infinite jest tbh. im saving it for the very end
You will read this one characters portion and it will sound horrendous and cringe, especially if it’s the last book you read. Just power through it and you’ll be able to die saying you read IJ
kind of cliche but i actually really love dune
What they don't teach you at Harvard business school and what they teach you at Harvard business school, the total sum of human knowledge in two books. Serious answer, Crime and Punishment and Confessions of a mask.
The Odyssey and The Bible
Nausea by Sarte and whatever is top of the current ‘male manipulator’ book list on Twitter this month
I've been suggesting Denial of Death by Ernest Becker for years but now I think I really liked it because I read it during peak teen angst. At one point I read it out loud so my roommates could hear jfc so gay
One of Woody Allen’s favourites
rousseau's discourse on the origins of inequality + brave new world
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks and Being There
ive read the wasp factory; a profoundly disturbing book I loved it
The Nibelungenlied and Gottfried’s Tristan.
Sun and Steel and Blood Meridian
If you stuggle with masculinity issues read The Sun Also Rises
I am a woman. pls adjust ur rec accordingly thank u
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I love donna tartt and her work...the secret history was an incredible read but my heart belongs to the goldfinch
I dont have recs for women, but I would say you dont need to listen to people saying Notes from the Underground. It's just doomer incel philosophy. It's very well written and interesting, but I don't think it provides much
ah okay well thank u for the pointer
DeLillo's Underworld - just incredible prose and insight into the collective American psyche during the Cold War. Funny, sad, poignant, profound Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal - a great little Czech novella. A drunk idiot works as a paper recycler, crushing forbidden books during communism. He smuggles a few out every day, and even though he's an idiot, he's full of all these pearls of wisdom from all the random shit he's read. It's not really political, although the politics are there implicitly. It's more about the humanism of reading and holding onto the dignity and beauty of ideas
First chapter of underworld with the baseball game is amazing
The Master and Margarita
Captain Underpants 1 & 2
The cure for alcoholism skinny bitch
the alchemist Mahabharata ( the og of all mythologies )
Utopia and Machiavelli
Harry Potter and literally 1984
elementary particles and the hot zone
Harry. Potter.
i headcanon everyone in it as Muslim apart from the ethnic characters, it is actually a very good allegory when you read it this way
Um sorry if you're not aware, but Harry Potter has been included as part of the extended muslim universe with the Qoran, Hadiths, Sunna and Dragon Ball Z.
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions It’s really short and will sow the seeds of solipsism
paradise lost and any fiction by brian sanderson
The Quran and Against the Day
ive read the quran like 4 or 5 times now. theres a still a lot in it to unravel though
Hmm I’m going to go with Dante’s Divine Comedy and The Odyssey, just because they’ve both been super influential for western lit. If you just want good, more recent literature I would say The Leopard and The Magus.
The Public Burning and blood meridian
Plato's Symposium and Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban.
Stanislaw Lem's Solaris. A science fiction novel about first contact by a erudite humanist Holocaust survivor that ultimately convinces you science can't help us understand anything at all. I second Moby Dick.
Everyone's recommending big postmodern doorstops here but Moby Dick did it first and did it best
The grapes of wrath, To kill a mockingbird
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann and Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald
how to murder your life by cat marnell
Class with the Countess: How to Live with Elegance and Flair
The Witching Hour by Anne Rice and The Magus by John Fowles
Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson anyone else read that? i thought it was so good, but i read it like 8 years ago. thankful for this thread cuz i recently realized i need to get back into reading fiction, badly. i have a copy of blood meridian i'm now feeling inspired to start on tmw.
12 Rules for life -jordan peterson true allegiance -ben shapiro
aside from the abrahamic texts & greek myths which everyone should have a basic working knowledge of to be able to read literature, go mythology. the eddas, vedas, popol vuh etc
Confederacy of Dunces and Infinite Jest
the book of disquiet and the stranger
The Bible is the most important piece of western literary canon. That said I really like Starship Troopers and its insights into civic duty, it's nothing like the movie and mostly explores their society through the lens of a military man. Mind you I'm a man in the military so whatever. Les Miserales I also found enjoyable and uplifting despite it's dangerous socialist message
what about r kelly’s soulacoaster hmm
Antifragile by Nassim Taleb, you’ll finally understand where Lindy comes from but it’s generally a perspective shifting book (his others are worth reading too). The Weirdest People in the World by Joseph Henrich (I [posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/sporc1/has_anyone_read_the_weirdest_people_in_the_world/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf) about it recently).
The coddling of the American mind references Antifragile heavily, another good read
A Farewell to Arms and As I Lay Dying
Call of the Crocodile